Fighting Wildfires

Fighting Wildfires

Top of Mind with Julie Rose - Season 1, Episode 73 , Segment 2

Making and Unmaking Nations, Fighting Wildfires

Episode: Making and Unmaking Nations, Fighting Wildfires

  • May 29, 2015 9:00 pm
  • 51:24 mins

Jason Forthover from U.S. Government’s “Fire Lab” in Missoula, Montana, a mechanical engineer with 20 years of firefighting experience.  Bret Butler from the Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory where he researches heat  and combustion processes in wildland fire.  Thomas Fletcher, professor of Chemical Engineering here at BYU, where he researches ignition and combustion.  Jeff Kline, Fire Operations Specialist at the Utah Bureau of Land Management, has extensive experience fighting fires.  A panelist of experts discusses wildfires.  The season of brush blazes and forest conflagrations is upon us, and these fires are getting bigger and hotter.  Data from the National Interagency Fire Center Show an exponential growth since the 1980s in mega-fires that burn over 100,000 acres.